Intel has tested a pioneering method of cooling servers

07/09/2012

A new method of cooling servers from Intel was 90% more effective than the traditional one. Intel has just completed testing of a new ’green’ cooling, in which the server is fully immersed in mineral oil. Intel server were immersed in liquid-filled cooling oil bath for a whole year. It was found that immersion in oil - it’s not crazy, but quite energy-efficient way to cool computers in data centers. "We can reduce the energy consumption for cooling by 90-95%, and reduce the energy consumption of servers by 10-20%," - the company said.

Mike Patterson of Intel said that the technology was quite safe for the server components. After the test period, Intel servers were placed in a laboratory analysis of faults that are not detected any damage.

"Dive into the oil servers, for people not familiar with the results of our study, it may seem risky," - said Patterson. "But do not get hung up on the initial reaction."

At this point, some data centers are already using this approach to cool their computer systems. These include companies such as Oil / Gas Seismic Processing Center; European Colocation Center; East Coast Corporate Data Center; US Research Institute; and the Texas Advanced Computing Center.

As a cooling agent used is transparent, non viscous, odorless and non-toxic cooling fluid. The company called it GreenDEF.

Energy savings are due to the removal of air coolers, which eliminates the need for the oil immersed servers.

The company also mentions the increasing resiliency of servers, due to the absence of dust. Dust is a thermal insulator, which leads to an increase in temperature and decrease in reliability. A recent study showed that the accumulation of dust leads to a 2% increase in energy expenditure due to the temperature rise.